The reader has perhaps read that remarkable¹ work, Who Put Back the Clock? by E. H. B., which appeared for several days upon the railway bookstalls and then vanished entirely² from the face of the earth. Whether eating Time makes the chief of his diet out of old editions; whether Providence³ has passed a special enactment⁴ on behalf of authors; or whether these last have taken the law into their own hand, bound themselves into a dark conspiracy⁵ with a password, which I would die rather than reveal, and night after night sally forth⁶ under some vigorous leader, such as Mr James Payn or Mr Walter Besant, on their task of secret spoliation — certain it is, at least, that the old editions pass, giving place to new. To the proof, it is believed there are now only three copies extant of Who Put Back the Clock? one in the British Museum, successfully concealed⁸ by a wrong entry in the catalogue; another in one of the cellars (the cellar where the music accumulates) of the Advocates’ Library at Edinburgh; and a third, bound in morocco, in the possession of Gideon Forsyth. To account for the very different fate attending this third exemplar, the readiest theory is to suppose that Gideon admired the tale. How to explain that admiration⁹ might appear (to those who have perused¹⁰ the work) more difficult; but the weakness of a parent is extreme, and Gideon (and not his uncle, whose initials he had humorously borrowed) was the author of Who Put Back the Clock? He had never acknowledged it, or only to some intimate friends while it was still in proof; after its appearance and alarming failure, the modesty

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